Mercurysteam performs necromancy on a dying classic, and the results aren't pretty... or fun.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate brings the series back to Nintendo's portable systems, where it thrived for a decade, after a lengthy hiatus. Unfortunately, the game suffers from a single glaring problem: It's not very good.

What it does differently fails to compensate for the fact that Trials is simply better.

There is no getting around the similarities between Urban Trial Freestyle and the Trials series. The former, being a brand new game coming after several Trials titles, including two extremely successful XBLA games, is invariably going to attract cries of copycat. Part of that might be due to ignorance over the fact that motorcycle trials are a real thing, albeit something that isn't especially popular in the U.S. Regardless, being based on the same sport or activity means sharing a lot in common. Beyond those basics Freestyle does make some effort at distinguishing itself, although it fails to do so in any way that truly makes it superior.

Just like Trials, Freestyle is a game all about balance. You race trials bikes through 2.5D environments while shifting your weight forward and backward and exercising control with the throttle in an effort to avoid falling off. Not every event is a race to the finish, as in Trials; those do exist, but you'll also spend time on each level completing objectives located at specific points like high jumps, long jumps, speed checks. You're never required to exceed a certain benchmark; you simply do the best you can on each stunt as you make your way to the finish, which has to be reached in less than five minutes. The sooner your make it to the finish the more bonus points you'll receive, but the allure of returning to a checkpoint and retrying a stunt can be hard to resist when each one has an accompanying leaderboard and an in-level indication of its top player. It's easy to blow several minutes trying to top yourself on a stunt, which is a calculated risk as returning to the most recent checkpoint means forsaking the score you've already set.

A blockbuster sci-fi game that epitomizes Hollywood's influence on video games.

Throughout my time with Crisis 3, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was trapped inside of a Hollywood film. This became especially true during the more predictable moments of the script. At one point in the campaign, my partner and I, a man called Psycho, quietly snuck through the sewers as we attempted to evade C.E.L.L. -- a private military outfit ordered to find and capture us. Pyscho was formerly a Nanosuited military bad boy like me, but he had his outfit surgically removed by force somewhere between the last Crysis game and this one. Relegated to a life as a regular soldier, Psycho tugged at a rusty crank to open a set of sealed double doors until he felt fatigued; a loud creak reverberated through the environment -- a sure sign to anyone in earshot that they weren't alone.

Metal Gear Solid 4 may be one of the most polarizing games of this generation, but supporters and dissenters alike can come together and agree on one point: Director Hideo Kojima really goofed with his choice to depict the outrageous acrobatics of Raiden's new cyborg form exclusively through non-playable cutscenes -- a decision that seems like an intentional tease, given that Guns of the Patriots features a creaky and cranky old man as its protagonist. And Kojima certainly isn't above yanking his audience's chain; remember, 2001's controversial Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty came into being largely as an elaborate and masterful prank engineered to prove its director's point about the control and flow of information. We have only short attention spans to thank for the fact that games journalism as an institution wasn't dissolved shortly after Sons of Liberty's release.

Sony's raccoon does a whole lot of things. Too bad none of them are particularly interesting.

A few
weeks ago, a couple of us were talking about the recent trilogy
of Ocean's
films. We remarked how Ocean's 13
just felt like a complete
retreading of everything that 11
had done a few years before. It told a
similar story with an identical flow, and rarely dared to venture outside of its predefined comfort zone. This was a far departure from Ocean's 12,
a creatively
bizarre, self-aware caper that alienated a lot of fans based on just how
different it was from its predecessor. But both Jeremy
Parish and I agreed that 12
was our favorite and the most memorable of
the trilogy because of this very departure. It takes commendable courage to completely turn a
successful formula on its head, and that's exactly what Steven
Soderbergh did. It's with this in mind that I say that Sly
Cooper:
Thieves in Time contains far too
much Ocean's
13, with none of 12's
risk to be found.

As the title suggest, Sly's
conceit in this installment is his team's ability to traverse to
different time periods on a journey to reunite with various members of
the raccoon's thieving lineage. After a ridiculously long lore dump and
an initial prologue on the rooftops of Paris, Sly and crew embark on their quantum adventure. You'll bust a cowboy out of jail, learn to manipulate time
in an ancient desert kingdom, and reunite a sushi chef with his beloved
cutlery. But despite the promising nature of these premises, Thieves in
Time never manages to rise above mediocrity, no matter which era you
travel to.

Developer Gearbox's Alien FPS will make you scream for all the wrong reasons.

About an hour into Aliens: Colonial Marines, it's hard to find a reason to keep playing. At least that's exactly how I felt during my solo campaign run. Xenomorphs -- the creepy, black-suited extraterrestrials from the Hollywood films -- often slipped past my dimwitted allies to attack me directly. In some instances, they visibly brushed shoulders with my teammates, as they pounced towards my avatar and took a swipe at my head. Honestly, it's a strange sight to witness at first. Can the nimble Xenos even see my allies? It's hard to tell, but one thing became clear to me at this point: I'm the only target on the field that matters, and unless I round up four buddies for a coop session, no one is coming to my rescue.

Koei's sequel challenges the meaning of "sequel" itself in this eerily familiar follow-up.

Some things in the game
industry are such no-brainers you wonder what took so long when they
finally do happen. For example, when Koei took their long-standing Dynasty Warriors
franchise, known for letting you blow away armies of dim-witted
enemies, and paired it with the macho manga/anime series Fist of the
North Star. It makes perfect sense, as it's one of Japan's supremely
mindless action series (in a good way). The first First
of the North Star: Ken's Rage
wasn't too bad for the start of a new sub-series, and First
of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2
attempts to tighten up some of the loose ends, but in doing so ends up
diluting other parts of the game that were just fine.

1UP editors team up for a tandem review of Visceral's latest take on sci-fi horror.

If pop culture has taught us anything, it's that space can be a pretty lonely place. Like Ellen Ripley before him, Dead Space's Isaac Clark had to endure two full games of solitary terror in order to arrive at where he is today. To give the guy a break, EA and Visceral Games decided to expand the third installment in the series by allowing a second player to assume the role of John Carver, and officer in the Earth Defense Force with a bit of a troubled past. Together, the two of them journey from the familiarity of decrepit spaceships to the unfamiliar hell of Tau Volantis, a frozen planet that holds the key to saving humanity. With this newfound importance placed on cooperative play, we decided that it would be best for 1UP editors Jose Otero and Marty Sliva to team up and review Dead Space 3 together.

Marty Sliva: Before we delve into Dead Space 3, I feel like we should first state our history with the series. How versed are you with the prior games?

Or maybe just a really good, challenging strategy RPG.

For the past week, 1UP has explored the role of violence in video games and the fact that far too often games trivialize human life, rendering it as a cheap commodity that encourages wanton killing and casual slaughter. Fire Emblem: Awakening suffers no such defect. Here we have a game in which you will agonize over every move on the battlefield, think long and hard about every action you take, and sweat every encounter your characters engage in, knowing that each duel could be their last -- ever.

Of course, in doing so, Awakening also reveals the fundamental flaw of this sort of game: The computer has no such qualms. Your AI opponents are just as fragile as the army you command, and their deaths stand as equally permanent. But you're tasked with carrying this same small team of warriors throughout an entire campaign of dozens of battles and can't afford to err. Your enemies don't behave like you. You face new combatants in each engagement, and the computer acts accordingly. It sends forward its units with reckless abandon, cheerfully marching a single swordsman alone into a knot of your fighters in order to strike a blow against your weakest mage. No matter that this combatant will certainly die as soon as you're allowed to make your next move; Awakening's AI doesn't need a sense of self-preservation, and as such doesn't have to play by the same limitations as you.

The long-awaited turn-based strategy game shows how it's done.

Oftentimes the approach developers take when designing a game in an established genre involves adding layers of complexity in the hopes it will add up to a game with depth. What we don't see as frequently is a developer that comes at things from a much different angle, paring back at the excess, and in the process, delivering a more streamlined, yet still deep, game. That is exactly what 17-Bit have come up with in Skulls of the Shogun, and although that notion may be objectionable to diehard strategy game fans who want their games to be anything but approachable, Shogun manages to provide a highly enjoyable game that it just so happens almost anyone can play without hours of practice.

Being a Mega Man fan these days feels kind of like being an angry teenager. Even though we're justified in punching our pillows and mumbling about how Capcom Japan doesn't understand us, our tantrums haven't changed much; Capcom Japan has not done right by their blue bomber lately. The developer hasn't even done anything noteworthy to celebrate Mega Man's 25th birthday, and that's a shame because a quarter century of existence is an impressive feat for a video game character -- even if said character is a near-immortal android to begin with.

Capcom USA, on the other hand, is trying its hardest to help fans keep themselves together while Mega Man's makers slowly decide what to do with him. In one particularly admirable effort, Capcom USA adopted Street Fighter X Mega Man, a sprite-based Mega Man/Street Fighter crossover initially conceived and partially programmed by Singaporean fan Seow Zong Hui.

Its brevity disappoints, but this charming little adventure has heart.

If any single thread runs through the small (but growing) fabric of Studio Pixel's Cave Story universe, it's that of the outsider. In Cave Story, the first time you hear the term "outsider" comes in reference to Sue, a young girl who appears to be a half-rabbit Mimiga. Yet the dwindling population of the Mimiga Village view her with suspicion for having come to their home from parts unknown. Eventually, the Mimiga's collective plight outweighs their contempt for Sue, but even then the stigma of the outsider continues to permeate the tale as the player controls the greatest alien to be found in the tale: A war robot who formerly fought in a war that raged across the world outside the caves. Lost and essentially alone, he aspires to escape to the outside world, and his efforts are regarded with diffidence and suspicion.

Level-5's long-awaited RPG does a disservice to the magic of Studio Ghibli.

In case you haven't noticed, we at 1UP have been a bit wary about using the term "Japanese RPG" within the past year or so. With experiences like The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls eroding our preconceived notions about role-playing games from the East, the term "JRPG" is rapidly losing the meaning it once had -- especially now that American creations like Costume Quest, Cthulu Saves the World, and Penny Arcade 3 have adopted certain design tropes once associated with another country. But even as the exciting world of genre classification continues to spin into total anarchy, some developers take no issue with delivering the expected; both Dragon Quest and Pokemon stand as excellent examples of developers continuing to iterate on a limited, time-tested formula, all while offering up enough new ideas to sustain the series. These two series may rely on ideas unchanged for decades, but they do so in a manner that keeps players engaged and addicted.

Ron Gilbert conjures the spirit of Monkey Island through a modern-day platformer.

I really don't need to tell
any of you adventure game fans that we're in the midst of a genre
renaissance. This past year has seen a wealth of
titles that present many different takes on one of gaming's oldest
genres. From Telltale's award-winning adaptation of The
Walking Dead, to iOS
showcases like The Room,
to beautiful sleeper hits like Kentucky
Route
Zero, those looking for
narrative-based puzzle solving have no shortage
of options. But each of those games I just mentioned come from
relatively young voices in our medium, despite their respective levels of quality being more
reflective of seasoned creators. It's with that in mind that we enter
The Cave,
Double Fine's latest straight from the mind of adventure game
pioneer Ron Gilbert.

For the Maniac
Mansion/Monkey
Island creator's latest tale,
we're immediately introduced to an
omniscient, devious, and hilarious narrator who also just so
happens to be the titular cave. As our Sherpa on this downward quest,
The Cave himself (itself?) provides many of the game's most memorable
moments, and is immediately a strong contender for 2013's best new
character. In the spirit of Maniac Mansion, the first decision the player makes stems from choosing a trio of heroes to send into the dark
depths
of Gilbert's world. These adventurers range across all genres -- a Time
Traveler, a Buddhist Monk, and a pair of creepy, Shining-inspired
kids
are all at your disposal. Each of the seven tortured souls has a specific reason for
journeying into the cave, which is conveyed through single-frame
paintings that you find scattered throughout the environment. As you
descend deeper and deeper, you'll realize that each character may or may not represent one of the seven deadly sins, and parsing out their darkly-comedic
backstories is one of the true joys to The Cave.

Acquire gives us a music-strategy hybrid that falters on both counts.

These days when most people hear the term "music game", they mainly think of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Colored icons falling down the screen. Tapping various buttons as the icons pass a pre-determined point. Success demonstrated by the ability to make the song you're playing sound like it does on the original recording. A pile of plastic instruments. I've been playing those kinds of games since they were first published, and I still play them on a regular basis. However, Orgarhythm is not that kind of music game. Instead, Acquire and Neilo decided layer a strategy game on top of the beat-matching to give a less familiar experience.